Neil Hamburger show at Lincoln Hall was a comedy disaster. A perfect comedy disaster.

By Zach Freeman

Chicago Tribune|

May 11, 2017 | 10:19 AM

Grease-slicked hair stripes across his forehead in a blatant comb-over. He spills half of his drink setting it on a music stand and pours the rest on his head a few minutes later. He loudly and abruptly clears his throat, pauses, and then clears it again.

Ladies and germs, this is Neil Hamburger, the boorish, often shrill, tuxedo-clad, sad-sack alter ego of comedian Gregg Turkington. He's here to entertain and he is incredibly, impressively, exquisitely unfunny.

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And that's the point.

Neil Hamburger — whose non-sequitur-laden act plays out like a brutally crushing mockery of Jay Leno crossed with a bitter, washed-up drunk on a bar stool — is a near-perfect case study in the upside down world of anti-comedy, where groaners are golden and agitation is an art form. Often compared to Tony Clifton, the churlish entertainer created by the late Andy Kaufman, Turkington's creation is much less cocksure but equally abrasive.

The entire premise of anti-comedy is predicated on the notion that if you travel far enough down the rabbit hole of humor you'll sail past funny, borderline, bad and even plain old terrible and emerge on the other side with so-bad-it's-good and disaster-as-art-form.

As Hamburger, Turkington has over the course of 25 years released a series of bizarre albums (with titles like "Raw Hamburger" and "Left for Dead in Malaysia"), appeared on offbeat Cartoon Network shows like "Adult Swim" and "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" and even starred in a feature film (2015's mostly well-received "Entertainment"). He's also toured the country several times over.

As part of his current tour, he was in Chicago on Wednesday night, crisscrossing the stage in Lincoln Hall's intimate auditorium with a drink alternately in his hand and tucked into the crook of his arm. With frequent grimaces and heavy sighs, Hamburger worked through an hour of painfully plodding material that drew cheers, heckles and, believe it or not, laughter.

"What is the most disgusting thing about eating sushi off of Britney Spears' chest? The sushi probably came from Panda Express."

His jokes are eye-rollingly bad, but there's a certain lyricism to the way he formats them to ensure maximum awkwardness. Wearing black-framed glasses, Hamburger belts out his set-ups with a determined lack of grace, frequently repeating certain words or even reiterating a phrase. He can draw out the setup for a joke for several minutes, stumbling over phrasing or stopping midsentence to (once again) clear his phlegmy throat before starting completely over.

Sometimes his setups have false endings, with Hamburger adding a pause that implies the question is done before plowing on with further unnecessary and often incredibly intricate details. When he does get to delivering his punchlines — after a call and response from the audience — they're inevitably low-rent, poorly executed and notably outdated. They're also disproportionately directed at musicians.

"Why ... Why ... Why did the compassionate nurse — the compassionate nurse — why did the compassionate nurse smother her patient to death with a pillow? Well, because she found out he was in Dire Straits."

Over the course of the night, Hamburger torched a long list of famous bands and musicians: Gene Simmons, Limp Bizkit, Iron Maiden, Madonna, the Eagles, Tupac Shakur and even the Beatles. At one point — after remarking offhandedly, "Wow, can you believe it guys? It's 2017!" — he seemed to be pushing back in time to see how out-of-date he could get, working his way back to jokes featuring Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens.

"Why was it always so hot onstage at a Grateful Dead concert? Because none of their fans worked."

Belabored puns make frequent appearances in Neil Hamburger's work, and they were especially noticeable in a series of knock-knock jokes that were sprinkled throughout.

Example: "Knock-knock. Who's there? Witch. Witch who? Which of you sold the bad drugs that killed the lead singer of Blind Melon?"

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It's an oddly cerebral experience watching a comedian bomb so hard with such blatantly bad material that he crosses over into a next level of comedic territory. And it's especially interesting to consider what reactions a show like this would generate from the uninitiated. It would be an entirely different experience to stumble upon a Hamburger show by accident than it was to witness one with an audience eagerly along for the ride.

But not all of Hamburger's fans know how to respectfully enjoy a comedy show. At one point a man yelled something out during a joke, and Hamburger showed that he's used to hecklers, snapping out a lengthy and gory reprimand, and telling him adamantly, "If you have something to say about the show, go out into the street and get hit by a car!"